Top Draws in 2016
By averaging 8,974 fans per home date, the Charlotte Knights atBB&T Ballpark were the top drawing team in all of minor league baseball. The Knights were also #1 in Triple-A, while the Frisco RoughRiders at Dr Pepper Ballpark averaged 7,024 to be the top drawing Double-A team. At the Single-A level, the Dayton Dragons' average of 8,188 at Fifth Third Field was easily the best for the classification. For short-season teams, the 6,177 average drawn by the Vancouver Canadians, the only minor league team located outside of the US, at Nat Bailey Stadium lead the way.

The Box Office Busts of 2016
The smallest typical crowd at a minor league ballpark was 334, which is what the Class A Lakeland Flying Tigers averaged at Henley Field, the minors' smallest park (1,000 seats) in 2016, when it served as a full-season temporary venue. For teams that play a short season of games, the Princeton Rays claimed the bottom spot by averaging 457 at Hunnicutt Field. At the Double-A classification, the Mobile BayBears, with 1,527 at Hank Aaron Stadium, had the worst average among teams with a home ballpark (the Hartford Yard Goats tallied just 831 playing "home" games at a series of ballparks not in Hartford). The smallest average crowd at the Triple-A level was the 3,218 of the Gwinnett Braves at Coolray Field.

Being Average
The average number of tickets sold per minor league game in 2016 was 3,931. The closest a team came to that number was the Harrisburg Senators, who averaged 3,901 at FNB Field.

18 Got 'Em All In
Depending on league and level, teams have between 34 and 72 home games scheduled per season. Here's the games-by-league breakdown, with the teams listed in brackets having made it through their 2016 season with no home postponements, and thus no lost gates:

Games/Gates Lost
There were 35 teams that lost at least 5 dates due to weather, most often rain, or other circumstances. In that regard, the most unfortunate team in 2016 was the Charlotte Stone Crabs, who lost 10 dates at Charlotte Sports Park. The Lakeland Flying Tigers had 9 postponements at Henley Field and the Colorado Springs Sky Sox had 8 game dates at Security Service Field that could not be made up. Additionally, six teams had 7 cancellations, five teams had 6 lost dates, and 20 teams couldn't make up 5 dates.

Also, the Hartford Yard Goats had 21 less home dates than possible but they did not have a home ballpark in 2016 and spent the season as a traveling team, playing "home games" in other places as they were able.

Added up, there were 453 cancelled dates by minor league baseball's 160 teams, which had a collective 9,952 regular season games scheduled in 2016. That means attendance was counted for 9,499 dates at ballparks used by minor league teams.

Minor League Baseball Attendance in 2016

Regular season attendance for the 160 teams playing in the 14 minor leagues affiliated with major league baseball and based in the USA was 37,345,155 in 2016, when there were 9,499 game dates.

Listed on this page by league are the home attendance figures for all teams, which are sorted by highest to lowest average attendance within their respective leagues. As has long been custom, the numbers are based on tickets sold, so no-shows (unused tickets) are included in a team's attendance total and average.

Note that due to weather, not all teams have the same amount of home "dates," a category that is used instead of "games" since most teams are forced to play a varying number of single-admission doubleheaders to make up for games postponed by rain, etc. Doubleheaders count as one date because one ticket is sold for both games. Hence the number of dates, which is what average attendance is based on, is usually less than the number of home games played. In 2016 just 11.25% of teams had no postponements at home, and for only those 18 teams did dates equal games played.

All attendance totals and dates are from league websites. Ballpark information is from the Baseball Pilgrimages-compiled 2016 Ballpark Directory.

Triple-AInternational League6,765,909 tickets sold by 14 teams for 969 games (6,982 average)

Home Away From HomeDodd Stadium served double duty in 2016, with the Norwich-based ballpark being home to the city's minor league team, the Connecticut Tigers, for 36 dates and Hartford's homeless Yard Goats for 19 games, which were played on 14 days thanks to five doubleheaders

Most teams play all of their home games in one ballpark, but there are annual and yearly exceptions. In 2016, the Hartford Yard Goats were forced to play every one of their home games away from Hartford due to the unavailability of Dunkiní Donuts Park, which was to be the team's new ballpark, except that it did not get finished during the Yard Goats' inaugural season (the team relocated from nearby New Britain). So as a result, "home" games for Hartford were played in 10 cities, and thus 10 ballparks, in 2016. In all, 69 games were played and attendance was counted for 50 dates, as 12 times the Yard Goats were home for a doubleheader and on another seven occasions, all in Binghamton, games were played but attendance was not counted. For the 50 times that it was, 14 of the dates were actually in Connecticut, at Dodd Stadium in Norwich, where an Eastern League team played from 1995-2009 (the Yard Goats are an Eastern League team). The other nine venues in which Hartford's team hosted games were spread out among their league's member cities, with the Yard Goats being credited for the following crowd counts at them (and in Norwich):

Only in Akron and Erie did the Hartford Yard Goats not play an Eastern League home game in 2016. At the 10 ballparks/cities in which they did, the team's total official attendance was 41,569. For their 50 home game dates the average crowd was 831, with the range being from a mere 9 people (in Manchester) to 3,564 (Portland).

Meanwhile, as has been the case since 1996, the Birmingham Barons played one game at Rickwood Field, their home ballpark from 1910-1987, while the Brevard County Manatees played one home game at Holman Stadium in Vero Beach (the Jackie Robinson Celebration Game) for the third straight season. Tickets sold for those games contributed to each team's overall home attendance figures.